Recently, we are talking about a topic about whether 2018 can be regarded as the first year of the explosion of mass finishing. As a proof, our company received a lot of calls from real estate developers in July, the content of which was basically seeking strategic cooperation in mass finishing. Our company has been engaged in the mass fine decoration business since 2015. We have always believed that the rough houses should have been cancelled long ago and replaced by the delivery of hard decoration houses. Now this situation seems to have finally come. The question is whether we have done a good job of all parties involved. Ready? Let's take a look at them separately.

1. Design

1) Low degree of standardization

According to our company's engineering practice in Hubei in recent years, there are relatively few projects whose designs have reached standardization. Even for some real estate companies that have done a good job of standardization, when the project encounters some "special" conditions, the design has more variations.

Let me give you an example. For a certain project, the client told me that there are 13 units in 1,000 houses. This is not too much, and it is acceptable. The problem is that according to the requirements of the local government, each apartment type must provide customers with 3 different styles of design, so that there may be 39 combinations. What's more serious is that this project will also provide customers with "optional" services. Will there be hundreds of combinations? As a result, the batch decoration of 1,000 houses has become a combination of family decoration, which may cause problems in construction organization.

2) There is a lot of room for optimization of apartment layout

The entire real estate industry has been making rough houses for more than 20 years. From the perspective of hard decoration houses, there are too many problems with rough houses. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out hard decoration house design simultaneously in the architectural design stage to avoid a large number of unavoidable defects in the later period.

It is a pity that so far, not many real estate companies have implemented fine decoration design intervention in advance and vigorously researched the optimization of house types.

3) Some design practices leave serious quality hidden dangers

I will list a few here:

A) Hidden quality hazards brought by prefabricated buildings.

Everyone knows that the society has different opinions on the large-scale implementation of prefabricated buildings. I will only talk about the cracks caused by lightweight board walls. In a previous project, a lightweight board wall was used, and the cracks were very severe. So we have been observing the progress of this board wall and concluded that the progress is not particularly large. According to our statistical analysis, it is difficult to avoid cracks in wall latex paint for all projects that use lightweight board walls, and even a new term called "Christmas cracks" has appeared, which means cracks around the end of the year. At present, there are far fewer cracks in the walls of high-precision block masonry.

B) According to the current bonding system, tiling tiles on a smooth wall will cause a serious problem of empty drum falling off.

There are actually many reasons for hollow drums. This time I will only talk about the problem of too smooth wall base.

Please see Figure 1. This is a recent problem of a certain project. More than 10,000 tiles have fallen off in hundreds of houses. This is of course a serious problem. The root cause is that the surface of the concrete wall constructed with aluminum molds is too smooth. , The use of commonly used tile adhesives is not enough to solve the problem. Aluminum molds are a good thing. The quality of concrete constructed with aluminum molds is very good, but the surface is too smooth and requires special attention. In fact, we have already warned about this problem and proposed an effective pasting solution, but unfortunately it was not adopted.

This is something that happened recently. The bathroom wall on a certain project used polyurethane paint as a waterproof material and the construction was completed. Then we asked us to put tiles on the wall. This method was known a long time ago. The ceramic tiles will definitely be severely hollowed or even fall off. Practices such as throwing fine sand on the outer surface of the waterproof layer are not helpful. This knowledge was common sense more than 20 years ago, but unfortunately there are still projects that often use this wrong approach.

I didn't have screenshots in the second half of this conversation. I said that a 2,000-yuan wall shovel broke down within a few rooms. Polyurethane coating has this characteristic for waterproofing. It adheres firmly to the base layer, but the outer surface is not suitable for wall tiles.

Then look at Figure 3. Polyurethane is already known to be useless for bathroom walls, so is it okay to use common cement-based waterproof coatings (such as JS) and then use common tile adhesives? Unfortunately, it still doesn't work. The outer surface is still too smooth. Just do a test to know that even if you use a tile adhesive to stick a brick wall on the outer surface of JS, the result of the pull-out test is about 0.2MPa, which does not meet the requirements of the specification. The conclusion is very clear. Many damaged surfaces appear on the outer surface of the waterproof layer. Colleagues who don't believe it are best to do this experiment personally. Technical problems should not just be verbal arguments. It is the correct way to speak with data.

In fact, we have found ways to improve how to affix tiles on the above three smooth base layers. The effect is much better and the cost is lower. Unfortunately, many times designers or recruitment departments have already stipulated pasting schemes. Our suggestions are great. It was rejected most of the time.

Then look at Figure 4. There are a considerable number of projects where pipes directly pass through the bathroom threshold stone or the roots of the wall in the water area. In this case, water can easily penetrate into the dry area along the pipes and eventually cause various leaks. In fact, as long as the design optimization is carried out in advance, it is not difficult to avoid this wrong approach.

C) The problem of floor heating in the bathroom

With the continuous development of fine decoration in the country, it is more and more common to use floor heating in the bathroom. This approach seems to have too many problems at present. I personally strongly recommend that the floor heating of the bathroom be abolished and replaced with other forms of air heating. Someone may ask: Why haven’t we heard any complaints? In fact, the reason is very simple, that is, these places did not do mass fine decoration before, and the owners themselves did not have many decoration problems, but there was no complaint to the developer.

What are the specific problems? First, the waterproof layer above the floor heating protection layer is often not fully enclosed around the periphery because of the need to reserve temperature gaps and complicated pipelines to pass through the waterproof surface layer. Second, after the floor heating is heated, the air and moisture will expand, and the waterproof layer will be destroyed. Third, the heating of the floor heating will bring about the expansion of the floor materials. Fourth, returning alkali will also increase. These problems are difficult to solve, and I don’t think that a so-called foot feeling problem can cause so much trouble.

To expand it a bit more, I think that floor heating is a very backward practice, and there are too many drawbacks. It is recommended to reform it completely and change to air heating. Some habits in life are inherently unscientific, so you have to make some concessions when appropriate.

In fact, there are still many problems caused by design. Due to time constraints, we only talk about these points.

2. Civil engineering general contract

1) Leakage in kitchen and bathroom is still common.

I thought that the leakage of the upper and lower floors of the kitchen and bathroom had been fixed long ago. What I didn't expect is that with the increase in the scale of real estate in recent years, the problem of leakage in the kitchen and bathroom has revived, and some have even reached outrageous levels. In one project, the leakage rate of the kitchen and bathroom reached 100%; in some projects, the bathroom was simply built on the added floor, which was really frightening. If these basic problems are not solved, it will be a huge disaster for mass finishing.

2) Insufficient strength of wall mortar occurs.

Our staff used an empty drum hammer to rub the plaster on the wall, and it was easy to draw a deep trench. Obviously, this kind of wall can't be pasted with wall tiles, but if it is to be reworked, the plastering of the entire building is often reworked. The workload is very staggering and the loss is huge, so it is difficult to carry out.

By the way, I would like to mention a problem in the specification, that is, how to check the quality of plaster mortar. At present, it is mainly used to make test blocks. The new specification adds water retention tests for certain types of mortars, but this test block inspection method is still very different from the field conditions. Imagine that after the mortar is placed on the wall, the thickness is only two or three centimeters, and the surface area is so large that it will quickly lose water under high temperature and strong wind conditions. How can it be strong? Some people think that the lack of strength of the mortar is a problem with the formulation, and we think it is mainly caused by rapid water loss.

It is not enough to check the strength in the laboratory, and the water retention experiment is too literary. It is strongly recommended to increase the on-site inspection. For this reason, we must reform the current pull-out test method and paste the test block directly on the spot to see the failure surface of the pull-out test. Where is it. Of course, a simpler inspection method is to wipe it with the palm of your hand. If there is any slag, the tiling will easily cause hollowing. Isn't this obvious?

3) The dimensional accuracy of the structure needs to be improved

The structural dimensional accuracy of any refined decoration project must be higher. The reason is simple: after the decoration is completed, there are a lot of "rulers" for testing accuracy on site, so users can see clearly. For example, if the skirting line is placed there, the wall and floor near the root of the wall must be smooth and straight; for example, if the door cover line of a wooden door is installed, it will be a large ruler. The thickness of the wall near the door must be the same. The flatness and verticality must be relatively accurate; for example, if the squareness of the kitchen and bathroom is not good enough, it is easy to find the size of the head after the wall and floor tiles are pasted, and so on. These problems are not easy to find in the era of rough houses, and they will be exposed after the hardcover houses are made.

In the past ten years, more and more real estate companies have introduced third-party companies to evaluate projects, which is very useful and effective. Of course, this kind of inspection must follow reasonable quality standards and appropriately control the content of the inspection, otherwise it will cause a lot of trouble, which we will talk about later.

4) Hollow cracks emerge endlessly

As we all know, leakage and cracking have always been an old problem in the construction industry. The leakage problem has been partly discussed before, but now we will talk about cracking. After finishing the batch fine decoration, small cracks can also be seen, which is a hot spot for complaints. According to current experience, the plaster-free system has a good effect on reducing cracks. However, the plaster-free system does not happen overnight. According to my understanding, it takes a few steps:

The first step is to standardize products and stabilize the layout as much as possible. This step is actually very difficult. It is a strategic decision of the company, and the boss of the company has to make up his mind.

The second step is to use advanced concrete pouring technology, and aluminum molds are one of them. After the product is standardized, the cost of the aluminum mold can be reduced, and the effect is very good. It is enough to make precast concrete in places where it is not easy to cast in place. Don't pursue the precast rate one-sidedly. Some people think that precast concrete is environmentally friendly. This is really a big misunderstanding. Reinforced concrete is said to be the most important invention in the history of the construction industry because it can be easily poured into various shapes, has high strength, low cost, and is safe and reliable. Some people think that cast-in-place concrete pollutes a lot, so we should consider how to improve the technology of cast-in-place to minimize environmental pollution. Why must it be changed to precast concrete?

The third step is to adopt a suitable partition wall system. This problem is actually very serious. I have been observing for many years and have not found a particularly good partition wall method. I suggest not to engage in lightweight board walls for the time being, because there are too many cracks, it seems that high-precision blocks are safer and more reliable. Some people think that spraying lightweight concrete is good. I don't have much contact with it, and I don't know if it is good or not. The light steel keel gypsum board system is actually good, but it is a pity that the people are not too accepting.

The fourth step is to use lightweight mortar for wall painting, so that plaster-free is finally achieved. There are indeed fewer cracks in these steps, and there are also many other benefits.

The quality problems of civil engineering still have a lot of troubles for mass fine decoration. We will only talk about these points today.

Third, the developer

There is no doubt that the developer is the leader of project management and the de facto EPC leader. If the developer has a big deviation in understanding of fine decoration, or does not act on the spot, or directs blindly, the consequences will be particularly serious. Let me give a few examples here.

1) High turnover ≠ interspersed construction

A particularly important topic in the current real estate field is how to improve the turnover rate. Turnover rate is very important to every company. It is a very correct approach for companies to pursue turnover rate. We also especially support real estate companies to increase turnover rate. The question is how to increase it?

A popular practice in the last two or three years is to let batches of fine decoration units and various other subcontractors enter the site very early, interspersed with civil engineering units in advance, and the construction period is as long as 18 to 24 months. Under normal circumstances, a batch The reasonable construction period of the fine decoration project is 8~10 months. The construction period has almost doubled, the production capacity of the fine decoration company and other cooperative units must be greatly reduced, the efficiency must be greatly reduced, and the turnover rate must be greatly reduced. Such a simple truth, many people can't figure it out, and think that the interleaving construction has improved the performance of all units. Benefit, this idea is really strange.

Here is an analogy: if four of us play a table of Mahjong together, of course we must be present at the same time; but if we are cooking a table together and each person only cooks one of the dishes, then obviously we don’t need to be present at the same time. Time to enter the kitchen is enough, which is obviously the most cost-saving way.

If the analogy is not rigorous enough, then we use data to speak. In fact, around August 2017, the results of 103 batch renovation projects were analyzed. Some of these projects were interspersed construction, and some were not, but they were all completed and the financial statements were also released. audit. Ernst & Young is one of the four major international firms, and their audits are very strict.

There is a lot of data, and the analysis is convincing. The conclusion is clear: the interleaving construction has led to a significant increase in the management fee of the cooperating unit, the profit rate has been significantly reduced, the staff turnover rate has increased significantly, and the team troubles basically occur in the interleaving construction projects. Moreover, the latex paint team, which rarely caused trouble in the past, had the worst trouble in interspersed construction projects. The most shocking thing is that 12 of the 103 projects have large losses. The first 11 are interspersed construction. The most serious one has a net loss of 20%. What is ironic is that this project is a model of interspersed construction. Many companies and government staff across the country have come to visit and inspect. The twelfth project was because there was a serious leakage problem in the bathroom with the added floor slab. We spent a lot of effort to prevent it, but Party A did not make up the money, so it lost.

After submitting this report to Party A, they were surprised to read the report and said to me that they had always thought that interleaving construction would be good for everyone. Why didn't the evidence you come up say bad? Why is Japan's interspersed construction so successful? This is a good question. I think this has a lot to do with Japan’s quality culture and integrity culture.

We visited the Japanese construction site and found that their interspersed construction was really good. One of the most important points is that the quality of the previous process must be qualified and on time. The construction personnel of the next process do not need to invest. Focus on complex acceptance, and you don’t have to worry about whether the previous process will be completed on time. And our actual situation is: in the 18-month construction period, more than 10 months were arguing with the civil engineering unit, and the work was still rushed in the last few months! The time is too long, leading to increased investment in management, increased worker disturbances, and site management has become more difficult.

The management team is the most precious resource. Since 2018, the number of large-scale decoration projects has increased significantly. If the management team cannot be released quickly, the entire industry will have big problems. We strongly recommend not to make unnecessary attempts, but to return to rationality and common sense, and to control the construction period within a reasonable range. It is a very reasonable demand for real estate developers to shorten the overall construction period.

The method is very simple, is to count down from the final delivery date, so as to decide when to intervene in the fine decoration construction, can’t it be enough? Why stretch the construction period so long? !

2) High quality standard ≠ high quality engineering

Earlier, I said that third-party inspection is beneficial to the improvement of project quality. I would like to continue to remind that quality standards and inspection contents must be appropriate. If the quality standards and inspection contents are set inappropriately, the effect may be counterproductive. It is strongly recommended that real estate companies check every standard with wide eyes to see whether they are suitable for the company's current actual situation, and avoid going too far and inadvertently dragging down the construction team. Here are a few points:

A) Ceiling height difference ≤ 4mm

According to the current technology, this is almost impossible. Furthermore, I don't even know what tools are used to detect it. Our industry currently generally uses laser multi-line meters to measure the height difference of the ceiling. The width of the reference line projected by this instrument is at least three millimeters. Theoretically, it cannot measure the error of 4mm, because if you want to measure the error below 4mm, the accuracy of the instrument is at least It's no more than 2mm! There are no measuring tools, so what construction are we talking about?

For real estate companies that did fine decoration in the early days, it is quite difficult to control the ceiling height difference within 10mm. After several years of training, it is only hopeful to control the height difference within 8mm. At present, it seems that whether it is 10mm or 8mm, the ceiling must be made of paste cakes, otherwise it will not be possible to make it.

B) The error of the upper, middle and lower distances on the opposite sides of the latex paint wall ≤ 8mm

An effective way to check the squareness of the room is to check the distance error between the skirting lines. The current quality items can be within 8mm. The strange thing is that I don’t know when it started. Some real estate companies have one more inspection standard, requiring that the distance error of the middle and lower three groups on the opposite two sides of the latex paint wall be controlled within 8mm. This is not only unnecessary, but also The difficulty is very large. Basically, every latex paint wall needs to be pasted and reinforced to meet the requirements. The cost has risen very seriously. At the same time, due to the difficulty of construction, it caused troubles in the latex paint team. Fortunately, when we pointed out that this standard is unreasonable, some real estate companies have abandoned this standard. I suggest you go back and take a look at it quickly. Is this one in your company's inspection standards inadvertently? It should be noted that some companies don't know their inspection standards. No one has read the form there!

C) Vertical flatness deviation of ceramic tile and latex paint wall ≤ 2mm

Limited by the current process practices and technological level, it is not easy to reach this standard, at least the input-output ratio is too low and there is too much rework. Take the ceramic tile wall as an example. As few companies control the squareness of the structure in the kitchen and bathroom, the adhesive layer is generally above 12~15mm when the wall tiles are installed. Obviously, such a thick bonding layer will cause the tiles to fall down, and finally cause the verticality and flatness to be excessive. If the allowable deviation is controlled within 3mm specified in the national standard, the construction difficulty will be much reduced, and there will be no impact on the delivery quality.

The situation is similar for latex painted walls. Since the current wall leveling materials are nothing more than plaster and putty, the strength of these materials is limited. During operation, a heavier or lighter scraper is enough to cause a deviation of more than 1mm. It is indeed certain to control the error within 2mm. Difficulty. In addition, for a long wall, even if it took a lot of effort to rectify, the verticality and flatness of the wall were finally controlled within 2mm, but this rectification often destroyed the look and feel of the latex paint. The overall effect has declined.

D) Zero hollowing of wall tiles is almost impossible

There is a clause in the old version of the building decoration engineering quality acceptance standard that requires zero hollowing of wall tiles, but how to achieve this? In order to achieve zero emptying, our company at least wastes a lot of money every year for rectification.

The good news is that the new "Quality Acceptance Standards for Building Decoration and Refurbishment Projects" promulgated in February of this year has recognized that zero hollowing cannot be achieved. The current zero hollowing inspection requirements have been corrected so that the industry can truly meet. What is strange is that the hollow drum allowance given by the new standard seems to be quite loose, but it is clearly required that there is no hollow drum near the corner of the wall, which is too loose.

For ordinary kitchen and bathroom walls, there should be no more than 2 hollow spots on each wall, and the diameter of each hollow spot should not exceed 50mm. Only one hollow spot is allowed on a brick, and no hollow spots are allowed to appear on the side of the tile. Angular position.

The reason why hollow drums are not allowed to appear in the corners is mainly because as long as the brick gap is set to 2mm or more, then the hollow drums at the corners can be solved by grouting. This requirement is actually much stricter than the new standard, but it can be achieved through hard work.

Compared with the hollowing of wall tiles, it is more important to prevent the wall tiles from falling off on a large scale. Our company has mastered a wall tile mounting method, which can greatly improve the adhesion without increasing the number of hollow drums, and the cost is lower.

E) Some unnecessary inspections waste a lot of management energy

There are too many problems in this area. Here are just a few examples:

Some require checking that the height difference between adjacent switch sockets does not exceed 0.5mm. This sounds reasonable, but in fact, this is a basic skill. If it takes time to check, it is better to directly replace it with a conjoined panel, or simply change it. The distance between these switch sockets is kept above 30mm, there is no hatred if there is no comparison, and the problem that the gap between the switch sockets cannot be decorated by the way is solved. We must remember a simple truth: all management has a cost, and we should try to use the lowest cost method to achieve our goals.

Some items need to check that the height difference between two adjacent cabinet doors does not exceed 0.5mm. This sounds reasonable, but we know that the factory processing dimensions of panel furniture are actually quite accurate. The height difference often comes from the pipe hinge. Slight displacement, if you want to solve this problem, you must either replace with a better hinge product or check it once before delivery. There is no way.

Some items need to check the gap width error of the tile. This sounds very reasonable, but the biggest source of gap width error is the error of the tile size itself. When the quality of the tile is not high, this cannot be checked. In fact, the tile gap should not be less than 2mm. This is the specification. As long as you follow this, the tile gap error is not very obvious.

Finally, look at a woodworking practice. Please see Figure 5:

(Picture 5)

The final effect of this method is to make a thin layered shape on the ceiling. This kind of ceiling is not uncommon. We have made at least tens of thousands of sets. There are many ways to safely and reliably fix the horizontal gypsum board in the picture. , The cost is not high, and it can well ensure that the thickness of the thin line about one centimeter in the circle in the picture is consistent. Unfortunately, in certain projects, Party A forced the use of wooden nails to fix the gypsum board. During this operation, the carpenter must operate on his back. It is easy to touch the steel bars when the wooden nails are driven, and it is not easy to level the gypsum board. The construction was so troublesome that hundreds of carpenters ran away on one construction site. Our previous projects rarely had problems with carpentry teams. The carpentry projects of these projects cost millions of dollars each.

3) Frequent inspection ≠ good engineering

In fact, there is not much skill in engineering management. When the management personnel go to the construction site frequently, the management of the construction site will not be too bad. On the other hand, it can be said that at least part of the management personnel do not go upstairs in a poorly managed construction site. The problem is that there are a few real estate companies that seem to think that meetings and inspections are the best way to manage construction sites. Individual construction sites hold meetings four days a week, and project managers are not allowed to ask for leave. In addition to the inspection and evaluation two or three times a week, the penalty amount is as high as 1% of the contract amount each time. Is this normal? The workers on the construction site became shocked, the project manager was exhausted, and the staff underneath were physically and mentally haggard. In order to cope with the inspection, the construction team laid a red carpet on the construction site, and when the inspection team left, they hurriedly rushed to work. Can this really manage the construction site? I want to hit a big question mark.

Fourth, fine decoration companies and suppliers

In 2018, the common problems faced by fine decoration companies and related suppliers are a large increase in tasks, very tight funds, and increased difficulty in internal management. Let me give you an example. Recently, a well-known international brand supplier was unable to deliver goods in time at multiple construction sites. This situation has hardly been heard before.

1) Will it survive in 2018?

Under normal circumstances, it is difficult for companies to starve to death, and more often they are being held up by the expanding market. The most difficult thing to control in fine decoration is group complaints. When there are many projects and scattered management energy, it is easy to cause management out of control, and eventually face serious complaints, thus destroying a company's brand. In the face of explosive growth in the market, we are not only delighted, but we should be walking on thin ice, facing the abyss, and do every project steadily.

2) Will it die poor in 2018?

Tight capital chain is a common phenomenon in the real estate industry. The use of commercial invoices will further deteriorate the financial statements of refined decoration companies and suppliers, and companies may die alive when they have plenty of tasks. We must strengthen our awareness of risks and learn financial knowledge to prevent death from being killed by ignorance.

3) Will it be exhausted in 2018?

We just talked about some issues that seriously affect project management, such as unscientific design, unqualified main structure quality, inappropriate organization and management methods, unreasonable quality standards, inappropriate inspection content, etc., pessimistically At present, this situation is still relatively common. If it cannot be reversed in time, the entire industry may face a huge waste of effective production capacity, increased team disturbances, and managerial staff exhaustion, which will eventually lead to the tragedy of the collapse of engineering quality. We must spread the management knowledge of batch fine decoration, straighten out the management relationship, reduce the labor intensity of the staff, and improve the work efficiency of the whole chain.

5. What should I do?

Our batch finishing project is actually a kind of assembly line, but the products on this assembly line are not moving, and the operators are moving. If all parties involved in the construction can persevere in improving every management detail like the manufacturing industry, it is entirely possible to greatly improve labor efficiency. Some people think of advanced equipment when they think of manufacturing. They simply infer that the construction industry must rely on equipment to do a good job in the same way as the manufacturing industry. In fact, the delicate management of the manufacturing industry is the first place to learn. It is a pity that our management personnel of all parties have some problems in their consciousness, so they did not make enough efforts in their actions, so that there is no water on the construction site today, power out tomorrow, no elevators the day after tomorrow, and no materials the day after tomorrow. Exercise-style inspections, I think if these seemingly trivial things are managed well, the productivity can already be improved by a big step.

In short, my opinion is that even if we do not make any technological innovations, but are committed to improving our management, then efficiency can also be improved by a big step. Some people only pay attention to technological innovation and think that only technological innovation is true innovation, but in fact, Schumpeter has long said that innovation in organization and management is also an important way of innovation. There may be only one thing we need to do right now, that is, not toss, too much production capacity is tossed away, too much cost is tossed away, too much passion and dreams are tossed away.